The subject matter herein relates generally to crimp tooling for terminal crimping machines for crimping electrical terminals to a wire.
Terminal crimping machines have long been used in the connector industry to effect high-speed mass termination of various cables. It is common practice for the terminal crimping machine to have an interchangeable tooling assembly called an applicator. In general, such terminal crimping machines are referred to as a terminator or press; however other types of terminal crimping machines may similarly be used, such as a lead maker or a bench machine. The applicator is typically mounted to a frame of the terminator. The applicator includes an applicator ram, which is operably coupled to a terminator ram of the terminator. The applicator holds crimp tooling, such as an anvil and a wire crimper, which is attached to the movable applicator ram. During crimping, the terminator ram moves the applicator ram, which moves the wire crimper relative to the anvil during a crimping stroke to crimp a terminal or connector to an end of a wire.
However, these known terminal crimping machines are not without disadvantages. For instance, the applicators are bulky having a housing that supports the crimp tooling and other components, such as a terminal guide. The housing occupies much of the space around the crimping zone making it difficult to place other components near the crimping zone, such as cameras or other sensors for monitoring the crimping process. Additionally, the applicators are expensive components to manufacture as the applicators are designed to have tight tolerances for locating the wire crimper relative to the anvil and to control the position of the wire crimper relative to the anvil during the crimp stroke.
A need remains for crimp tooling for use with a terminal crimping machine having improved functionality, that is less bulky and easily adaptable to different applications.